Hans van Meegeren's forgeries of old masters, including Franz Hals and Vermeer, take a bit of beating. During the 1930's and 1940's he fooled nearly all of the so-called 'expert' art critics of the day. Hermann Goering sold over a hundred of his own collection of (genuine) paintings to buy one van Meegeren forgery, a Vermeer if I recall correctly. When van Meegeren was arrested at the end of WW2 and charged with forging Old Masters, many 'experts' still refused to accept that many of his paintings were forgeries, even though he confessed. He was a very good painter in his own right, and some of his genuine original works fetch high prices - the amazing thing is that at least some of his own works have been forged in turn by others. There is a lot on the internet about him and his work.

Graham

Hello Graham,

I read the book "The Man Who Made Vermeers" which is all about van Meegeren. It was very interesting and a good look inside the art world.

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The technology that would have been needed to fake the moon landings simply didn't exist in 1969.

I don't know if that was meant to be a humorous remark or not but it made me laugh. The joke being of course that the moon landing was fake camp always states that the technology for getting to the moon didn't exist at that time.

Conspiracists! Here are the magazines for you! You don't think that William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, wrote the plays.... well here's the proof that Christopher Marlowe did the deed. He must have been okay if his name was Chris, right? The magazines are yours if you are the first to tell me how Kit Marlowe died. As before, previous winners of RipperCon 2018 swag cannot win again.

I don't know if that was meant to be a humorous remark or not but it made me laugh. The joke being of course that the moon landing was fake camp always states that the technology for getting to the moon didn't exist at that time.

c.d.

I'm not being facetious. It would have required a great deal more effort to fake it than to actually do it, and, unless the US government had some extremely advanced spacecraft that they weren't telling us about, it would have been impossible to do. It could probably be pulled off today. In 1969, not a chance.

Most people who posit a hoax tend to focus on the idea of staging the moonwalk on a soundstage. That would be doable, but it ignores the larger picture.

Consider first that the Saturn V stack was assembled under public scrutiny. Media had access to the Vertical Assembly Building ^1, and the process was of intense interest to the public. The stack contained exactly what was advertised - three stages with enormous engines, and tanks big enough to hold the requisite fuel and oxidizer, a lunar module, a service module, and a command module. There was no chance to fake any of that. It rolled out to the pad on the crawler, under public scrutiny every inch of the way. There was literally no way to swap out a component anyway once it had left the VAB, so we know that what was put together in the VAB is what was launched.

The astronauts rode out in the crew bus and got on the elevator under media scrutiny. The media weren't allowed in the White Room, though, so one might object that they were somehow smuggled out and the rocket launched empty. For the moment, grant that they launched with the rocket, and I'll return to that idea later.

So, we know that the Saturn V launched, and we know that it made it to orbit. Every observatory on earth with a reasonably powerful telescope could confirm that, as well as many radar facilities. Anyone with a good high-gain antenna would also be able to confirm that voice and telemetry was coming from the capsule in orbit. If we grant that the crew launched with the vehicle, we now have three men in orbit. There's no way to remove them from the vehicle in orbit that doesn't show the whole world what's happening. The Soviets were most assuredly tracking with their best equipment, and wouldn't have kept our secrets for us. A good many universities and professional observatories had the equipment to monitor that as well. When Apollo left earth orbit for the moon, then, those three men were riding along.

We know by the same method of optical and radar observations that the LM/CSM assembly left earth orbit, and took up orbit around the moon. Do you recall when Apollo 13 was in danger of being lost? As they were returning to earth, NASA put out a general request for large observatories to take optical fixes on Apollo 13, and share the results with NASA, as they wanted to be 100% certain of doing the mid-course correction properly, as they feared they had only the one chance. The big observatories can see something the size of an Apollo going to and from the moon. It's just a sunlit dot against the blackness, no details, but with several telescopes triangulating, you can tell exactly where it is in space.

So, we have at the very least three men in orbit around the moon. Can it be absolutely proven that two of them rode the LM down and walked on the surface? Not beyond a shadow of a doubt. Preponderance of evidence tends to show that they did, though. First of all, they returned with an assortment of rocks and dust that the world's foremost geologists agreed were plausible moon samples. Those were widely distributed, and I've never heard anyone expressing an educated doubt about that. Secondly, and more importantly in my eyes, they deployed a laser reflector at the landing site. It was not there before Apollo 11. It was there afterward. When I was in school, we used that to measure the exact distance from the earth to the moon.

Now, could some sort of automated or remote-controlled device have deployed that laser target? That's very unlikely. We were worse at remote control than even the Russians back then. Our stuff pretty much reliably failed. Read about the history of the Pioneer, Ranger, and Surveyor programs. It wasn't pretty. Now, if we faked a manned landing, presumably it was being done for the prestige value, but we announced in advance that the laser reflector was going to be set up for all the world to use. Given our record for automated missions at the time, that would have been as likely to end with public humiliation as anything. (One of the conspiracy theories of the time too was that the Russians were no better than us, and that their Lunokhod rover actually contained a man who had volunteered to give his life for the glory of the Motherland.)

Now, consider the return to earth orbit, which can be verified by the same methods used to track the ship outbound. Consider that there's no way for another ship to dock with the CSM in earth orbit without the entire world knowing about it (unless, of course, we posit NASA having access to extremely advanced ships with optical and radar stealth, and all kinds of maneuverability, which kind of renders the deception pointless anyway). Consider that at splashdown, in full public view and on live TV, those three men were in that capsule. There's no way to have gotten them out of or into that capsule after launch without at least the Russians, and probably a good many other people, knowing about it.

So... We can prove that the ship travelled from earth orbit to lunar orbit and back. We can prove that the three men rode along with it - there's simply no way to fake either fact. We can prove that something put that laser target in place, and on preponderance of evidence, it was done by a human.

^1 And if you ever get a chance to go inside that place, or even to stand next to it, take it. It is breathtaking. The VAB and Niagara Falls are the two most impressive things I've seen in my life. I regret that I never got to see a Saturn V launch - one of my friends described it as "like Niagara Falls made of fire".